


Coming Up Short

by story_monger



Series: Short Notice [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Men of Letters Bunker, Size Fic, Team Free Will, Tiny!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:02:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3470285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When life gives you shrinking spells, make climbing equipment and scale the couch in the living room. Obviously.</p><p>In which Sam decides to take his mobility into his own hands, Castiel and Kevin volunteer as human safety nets, and Dean becomes a daily event at the post office.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Up Short

**Author's Note:**

> It lives!  
> To anyone who's still hanging around waiting for the next part...here it is, and I'm sorry it's so late in coming. I had some awful writer's block, which involved a lot of staring into space, writing several hundred words, and then deleting all of it. Fun times.

“Vampire maybe?”

“Eh. Vampires don’t leave corpses like that.” Sam leaned forward to read the laptop screen, digging his fists into Kevin’s shirt to be sure he didn’t tumble forward ass over teakettle. “Yeah, see?” he said a moment later. “Says the bones had bite marks. Vampires don’t care about bones.”

“Oh.” Kevin’s hand came up and he gnawed absently at his nails in thought. “There’s other stuff that would chew on bones though.”

“Uh.” Sam leaned back to a safer position and leaned slightly into the crook of Kevin’s neck. “Well, werewolves go for the heart. Wendigos wouldn’t leave their prey lying around like that. Couple other man-eaters, but they’re less pervasive. And this is the only body they’ve found recently.”

“So. Good chance this actually was a wild animal,” Kevin concluded.

“Pretty good,” Sam allowed.

“Alright, then.” Kevin slapped the laptop shut and moved to stand from the couch. Sam braced himself for the lurch in a way that was becoming automatic. “Homework done; no supernatural dangers threaten our fair ‘berg. You want lunch?”

“Is it lunchtime?” Sam asked, settling into a crouch and keeping one hand fisted in Kevin’s shirt collar. “What time is it?”

“Around one.”

“Really?” A pause. “Should Dean and Cas be back by now?” Sam couldn’t properly see Kevin’s raised eyebrows from this angle, but he felt them.

“It’s only been an hour,” Kevin pointed out.

“And grocery stores don’t get that busy on a Thursday.”

“Maybe it’s the post office that’s busy,” Kevin said. Sam exhaled and leaned back.

Dean had announced that the trip to town was because of the bunker’s lack of Doritos. The trip to the P.O. box they’d opened at the local post office would be tangential, his tone implied. A quick stop in case that last package had finally arrived.

“I’ll bet it’s come by now,” Castiel had said softly to Sam earlier while he waited for Dean to emerge from his bedroom. “We know the woman sent it; she assured Dean. California is a long ways away. It probably takes some time.” Sam, perched in Castiel’ cupped hands, had tried a smile. He didn’t have the heart to educate Castiel on the US postal system; that a tiny package with a few ounce of dried leaves, even from California, shouldn’t take a month to arrive to its destination. Not unless something had gone wrong.

“So, you want lunch?” Kevin asked. Sam jerked his head slightly.

“I’m not hungry,” he said. He gestured. “Can you get me on the table?”

Kevin’s hand came up as he approached the main room’s table. Sam hopped over, and Kevin kept his hand steady as he lowered it to the table’s surface. This, too, was becoming automatic. Kevin, Castiel, and Dean did things slower, softer, more warily these days. Everyone adjusting behaviors to account for the 4.5-inch person in their midst. Sam never knew whether to appreciate these fresh habits or resent that they’d had enough time to develop. Four weeks, he’d discovered, could be a long time.

As Kevin disappeared into the kitchen, Sam hauled his phone from underneath a scattering of papers and woke it up with a swipe. He checked his email then, because Sam Winchester was nothing if not a masochist, he went to the USPS website and typed in the California package’s tracking number from memory. He hated how his heart did a little arc of anticipation as the screen loaded. But there it was: the envelope had reportedly been sorted in Sacramento several weeks ago before being sent to Kansas City. Then it had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.

Sam scrubbed at his face and gazed absently at the expanse of the room.

He was even getting used to this view, with the ceiling so high as to become blurry and the table as good as the rim of the Grand Canyon. Sam left the phone and went to the table’s edge to peer over. The concrete floor below looked terrifyingly distant and solid. Still, Sam hadn’t inherited his brother’s squeamishness around heights, so he sat himself on the table’s edge and watched his feet dangle over empty air. He couldn’t have clarified what exactly he was doing. Just that this felt like a subtle middle finger to the entire situation.

Slowly, Sam tilted his upper body forward. He kept his eyes on the floor, his bottom lip captured between his teeth. Deliberately, he envisioned what would happen if he misjudged his body and went tumbling forward. The fall, the impact, the fallout. Except Sam wasn’t going to let that happen. That was the point: he had enough control still. He hadn’t lost that entirely.

BAM

The door slamming was like a thunderclap that rattled Sam’s teeth and joints and made him flinch. And for three sick, heart-stopping seconds, Sam felt gravity and his own body perform a tight dance of pure physics. Somehow, within the handful of seconds, Sam had time to be reminded of his Physics 1000 class back at Stanford. Of a T.A. drawing balls and ramps and strings on a blackboard, adding in arrows to show the many forces. Force of gravity, force of initial motion in the x direction, force in the y direction, force of friction, air resistance. Will the item move? What will be the item’s velocity when it reaches the ground? How much force will it hit the ground with?

“Sam!”

Sam blinked and looked up. His brain had done its calculations: No, the item will not fall. But the item’s brother will stare at him with something too close to horror, then barge across the room and scoop the item up in one massive hand.

“Hey!” Sam snapped, his voice muffled through Dean’s fingers.

“What the hell?” Dean demanded, setting Sam into the middle of the table with a gentleness that belied his tone of voice.

Sam tilted his head blearily and met a wall of t-shirt. Dean’s face was somewhere above that, but Sam suddenly felt too tired to crane his neck any more. “Sam?” A draft of displaced air, and Dean’s face dropped down to hover over Sam. “What the hell?” he repeated.

“What?” Sam asked. The word came out wrong; it came out sounding like something the 6-yr-old Sam would say. The one who was petulant and impatient and had spent too many hours in the car. Dean’s nose hovered close enough for Sam to reach out and shove at it, so he did. “Don’t get so close, it’s annoying,” Sam said. “You surprised me, that’s all.” He then turned and aimed himself for his phone because nothing else on the tabletop presented a decent enough distraction.

“No that’s not _all_ ,” Dean snapped. “You—“

“I’m fine, Dean,” Sam called back.

Sam could hear Dean shifting behind him. Then a rustle of plastic bags and a roll of sharp boot steps. Sam dared to glance behind him. Dean had disappeared. Castiel hovered a few paces from the table looking like the kid whose parents had just fought.

“Anything at the post office?” Sam asked. Castiel silently shook his head. Sam hated how his heart sank. He really did.

“Sam, Dean is—“

“If you try to say ‘He’s just worried,’ Cas, I swear to god.”

“Okay,” Castiel said. Sam peered up at Castiel through a curtain of his hair. Castiel had crouched slightly. “Why were you sitting there?” Castiel asked.

Why were you tempting fate? he was asking. Why were you leaning far enough forward that there was any chance at all of…well.

“I can sit where I want, can’t I?” Sam asked. The petulance hadn’t disappeared.

“Yes,” Castiel said. His lips pressed together for a long moment. “Have you had lunch yet?” he finally asked.

Sam’s shoulders slumped. “No,” he admitted. Castiel held out one hand, and Sam stepped into it after a moment’s hesitation.

***

Sam had his epiphany on a Friday afternoon while perched on the back of the couch, above Kevin’s head. Kevin had taken a rare break from his tablet work—muttering something about the multiple meanings of floods—to land on the couch and flick on the television that Dean had shoved into one of the bunker’s main rooms so they could have something resembling a living room. Sam had agreed to join, and now they passed back and forth commentary about a reality show showing a couple buying and remodeling houses.

“Why would you splurge for the flooring?” Kevin asked rhetorically as the show went to commercial break. “They’re gonna lose money on that one.”

“Maybe,” Sam said vaguely. A commercial for some sporting goods brand came on. It flashed scenes of athletic, grinning people running marathons and scaling mountains. The usual. Except Sam tilted his head at the scaling mountains part.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about this before; he just kept assuming that he’d be back to his normal height soon enough that learning how to rappel down tabletops seemed silly. And, well, he’d done some rock climbing in college and he was an overall fit person. No reason he couldn’t try it _._

“Hey Kevin,” Sam kicked at the back of Kevin’s head. He’s learned by now that he could give people solid punches and kicks and it would bother them about as much as a tap from a normal sized person.

Kevin swiveled his head. “Yeah?”

“You want to help me with something?”

Kevin considered this as the TV exploded with a Biggerson’s commercial.  “Is it going to get me in trouble?” he asked.

“Shockingly enough, I don’t think so.”

“Alright then,” Kevin shrugged. “I think there’s only so many times you can watch a house get remodeled. What’re we doing?”

“Engineering,” Sam said. “Do you think the Men of Letters ever went fishing?”

***

Two hours later, after a lot of rummaging through old store rooms and wasting fishing line, Kevin held up a simple rope-and-hook ensemble for Sam’s inspection.

“So you’re going to start swinging from couch to couch?” Kevin asked as Sam tested the braided fishing line’s strength with a few sharp tugs. “You can be a miniature Tarzan.”

“Don’t let Dean hear that; he’ll never let that joke die,” Sam said, hefting the fishing hook in one hand. It felt good, like one of his own weapons. Sam peered up at Kevin. “You feel like playing safety net?”

They decided to start simple: scaling the worn couch in the living room. Kevin sat cross-legged on the floor as Sam gazed up at the couch’s arm. The hook should catch nicely on the fabric, Sam figured. He just had to…toss it up there. Somehow.

“Jesus,” Kevin yelped when Sam threw the fishhook in the general direction of the couch. It bounced off the couch arm and nearly caught Kevin in the face. Sam had to dart out of the way when the hook came clattering back to earth. “That almost had me,” Kevin accused, scooting back pointedly.

“Sorry,” Sam said, scooping the hook back up and squinting up at the couch.

Kevin, to his credit, was immensely patient about watching Sam alternatively toss his fishhook into the air and run out of the way when it lands. Finally, after more attempts than Sam was willing to admit, the fishhook caught on the couch’s fabric. Kevin whooped before he remembered himself, but Sam couldn’t even be bothered by the ringing ears.

“So you’re going to climb now?” Kevin asked, edging forward again now that the danger of flying fishhooks had gone.

“Yup.” Sam gave the fishing line a good few tugs. The hook stayed. Encouraged, Sam went to the base of the couch and braced his foot on the vertical wall of fabric. A short scramble, and he started walking up the couch. Kevin shrugged off his jacket and arranged it beneath Sam, then let his hands hover near Sam’s tiny form. Sam focused on hand over hand, step over step. He could feel his muscles burning already, but it was a welcome burn.

At one point, he allowed himself to glance back and realize just how high he was: well over a foot. Sam shifted his grip on the fishing line and kept going.

A half foot from the couch’s top, the line slackened suddenly. Sam had a heartbeat of weightlessness before he, rope, and the fishhook started tumbling back toward the ground. Physics again; it didn’t lie.

Two seconds later, all of Sam’s breath left him in a loud _oof_ when he landed on something warm and spongey. He blinked at the ceiling and didn’t dare move. Kevin’s face popped into his line of sight.

“You okay?” Kevin asked, eyes wide. Sam nodded once and opened his mouth to suck in as much air as he could.

“What happened,” Sam panted.

“The hook got loose,” Kevin said. “It was wriggling a lot while you were climbing and…shit, I should have gotten it before it ripped out.”

“You’re okay,” Sam promised, propping himself up on his elbows. He still had a death grip on the fishing line. “Give me a second.”

When Sam could breathe without panting, he had Kevin slip him back to the ground. Then Sam scooped up the fishhook and squinted up at the couch arm.

“Again?” Kevin asked, incredulity seeping into his voice.

“Again,” Sam agreed and tossed the fishhook into the air.

***

“Fishhooks?” Castiel echoed.

“And fishing line,” Sam added. “It works pretty well. I got to the top of the couch after just a few tries.”

Sam sat nestled in Castiel’s cupped hands, and Castiel sat in one of the weathered chairs scattered throughout the bunker’s library. The aroma of old paper and leather suffused the air.

“And then I climbed a chair and a table,” Sam continued, trying but failing to keep the pride from his voice. He still had sore muscles from the past two days’ excursion, but the results had been worth it. “Kevin had to tie the fishing line to a lamp on the table, but I got up there completely on my own.”

“That’s impressive,” Castiel said around a soft smile. And he looked like he meant it, but hesitance was clear in his voice when he added, “And now you want to climb bookshelves?”

“It’s the next logical step, isn’t it?” Sam gestured around at the shelves that had been tall for his old height and now resembled skyscrapers.

“Yes,” Castiel allowed. He tilted his head up to the shelves as well, and he bit at his bottom lip. Sam wondered who Castiel had picked up that habit from.

“It’s just that Kevin’s finally got a breakthrough on the tablet, so he’s pretty busy right now,” Sam said.

“No, of course,” Castiel dropped his eyes back to Sam. “I’m happy to help.” His eyes shifted to the small pile of tools sitting in his hands alongside Sam. “So. You’ll be using…er.”

“Suction cups,” Sam said brightly, holding up one of the clear plastic cups. “Kevin found them yesterday. Hooks and rope are pretty good, but I wanted to expand.”

“Is it viable?” Castiel asked, his eyes squinted in a way that made his doubts more than clear.

“That’s what we’re finding out,” Sam said, going to a stand. “And why you’ll be my safety net, in case they aren’t.”

“Hm,” Castiel said, but he lowered his hand to the table and let Sam hop out before unloading the suction cups and pieces of wire that had been sitting in Castiel’s hands. Within a few minutes, with some help from Castiel, Sam had twisted the wire into rough handles that would take his hands and feet. When the suction cups were ready, Castiel carried Sam to the base of one of the bookshelves.

“Did you purposefully chose to do this when Dean is in town?” Castiel asked, like this had just occurred to him.

“You’re so suspicious,” Sam tutted. He glanced up and found Castiel’s eyebrows raised. “Yes, maybe,” Sam allowed. “Are you going to lecture me?”

“No,” Castiel said brusquely. He settled himself cross-legged on the floor. “I think you’re both acting reductive.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Castiel leaned forward. “I’m ready,” he said.

Sam let his gaze linger on Castiel for another long moment before rolling his shoulders and turning his attention to the sheer wall of aged wood in front of him. He didn’t try to tilt his head back and look at the how high this thing went. He didn’t need to psyche himself out before he’d even begun.

Climbing via suction cups, it turned out, was a lot less sexy than rope climbing. The loud _pop_ the suction cups created made Sam feel like the bank-robbing villain in a low-budget Saturday morning cartoon. He discovered, to his relief, that the suction cups latched onto the wood readily enough, and even supported his weight, but that peeling the cups away from the wood was a frustrating process. He tumbled down a few times when he yanked arms or legs away a little too enthusiastically, but Castiel’s wide hands always appeared almost instantly. After nearly an hour, though, Sam had developed a feel for how firmly to stick the suction cups to the wood; enough to support him, but not so much that he had to struggle to peel the cups away. Soon, when Sam looked around, he was a good foot above where Castiel sat.

“You’re going well,” Castiel said, peering up. “Are your muscles sore?”

“Getting there,” Sam admitted, shifting his weight slightly. “I can keep going.”

Castiel didn’t try to argue this.

Sam lost track of time after that. His world narrowed down to moving arm over arm, leg over leg. The top of the bookshelf loomed just in view but elusively out of reach. Sam kept his eyes fixed on that point. His muscles started to shake, but he ignored them. He needed to get to the top. If he could do that then it meant…something. Sam didn’t try to figure it out; he just focused on working numb muscles.

“Sam!”

The sound rattled through Sam’s skull, and he twitches his head enough to glance behind him. Even that small motion sent thuds of pain across his neck. When Sam didn’t see Castiel behind him, he dropped his eyes down. He took a hard, involuntary inhale.

Castiel stood at his full height, and even then he had to tilt his head up to see Sam. Castiel’s feet, and the floor in general, were starting to look blurry from sheer distance. Sam felt a sudden swoop of vertigo and screwed his eyes shut.

“Sam?” Castiel shifted closer to the bookshelf. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Sam said around an exhale.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine,” Sam insisted.

“No you’re not.” Sam yelped when a soft platform materialized beneath him. When Sam glanced down, he saw that Castiel had his arm almost to its full extent so he could use his palm to give Sam support.

“Relax,” Castiel ordered.

“Cas, stop,” Sam shifted and felt his muscles burn in response.

“You don’t need to prove anything,” Castiel snapped. Something in his voice rippled; maybe residues of his Grace. “Sam, just let yourself rest for a moment.”

Sam gritted his teeth, but he could feel his body forcing him to settle into Castiel’s palm. He rested his forehead (dripping with sweat; he hadn’t noticed that before) on the wood and closed his eyes again.

“Sam.” Castiel’s voice was softer now. “Sam, you don’t need to prove anything.”

Sam tightened his grip on the wires.

“I just want to be able to do things on my own,” Sam said in a low voice.

“I know.” Sam felt Castiel’s hand shift beneath him. “But you don’t need to run yourself into the ground in the process.”

Sam didn’t reply. He didn’t speak for the next several minutes as his muscles throbbed and seized. When he peered up again at the top of the bookshelf, it seemed to sit impossibly far away all of a sudden. Sam could only imagine how body would protest before he got there.

“Cas,” Sam finally said. “Can you get me down?”

A long pause. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, but my muscles are cramping up.” Sam looked down to Castiel. “I’m um…I might fall.”

“Careful, then,” Castiel warned. His other hand came up to gently pull Sam’s hands and feet from the wires anchoring him to the suction cups. Sam fell back into a dark, warm cocoon. He felt himself being lowered, and when Castiel’s hands opened up, Sam blinked up at the wide face.

“You need water,” Castiel said. It wasn’t a question.

“Sure,” Sam said, abruptly becoming aware of how dry his throat and mouth felt. The next moment, Castiel’s face broke into a wide smile.

“Look at how high you got though,” Castiel said, and lifted his hand slightly. Sam straightened and squinted up at where his suction cups still were attached to the shelf, well over three-fourths of the way up.

“Oh.” Sam realized he was grinning. “That’s pretty good.”

“That’s more than enough to let you climb any of the tables or cabinets around the bunker,” Castiel pointed out. Sam glanced up to find that Castiel’s expression had transformed into something smaller and gentler.

“How about that water?” Sam asked after a moment. Castiel nodded and started for the library doors. Sam relaxed into the small, swaying valley of Castiel’s hands, and sighed as he felt his muscles continue to shake. He’d asked a lot of them the last few days.

A short time later, Castiel sat at the kitchen table while Sam gulped down water from a thimble. (It was about as _Borrowers-_ esque as possible, but the fact remained that thimbles were pretty ideal containers for someone Sam’s size.)

“Can I ask a question?” Castiel asked when Sam had lowered the thimble. Sam raised his eyebrows. Castiel fiddled with a hangnail for a moment before continuing. “Are you learning how to do this—get yourself around the bunker—because you think that…” Castiel cleared his throat. “That you’re going to be like this for a while?”

Sam’s mouth twitched up at one corner.

“It’s already been longer than what we expected,” he said. “Yeah, I guess so.” Castiel gazed at Sam with such a solemn expression that Sam involuntarily ducked his head.

“You’ll be back to your own size,” Castiel said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He tried to make it sound genuine.

***

Two days later, the package from California arrived.

Sam was alerted to its arrival by the front door slamming immediately followed by, “We’re getting Sasquatch back, bitches!”

Sam, sprawled across a book lying flat on the table, and Kevin, toying with a rubber band in deep thought, both blinked at each other then looked to where Dean was practically dancing down the stairs with Castiel right on his heels. He had something small and brown in his hand. The bottom of Sam’s stomach dropped out.

“Is that—“ Sam lost track of the sentence as he scrambled to a stand.

“Better believe it, Tom Thumb,” Dean said, tossing the package onto the table. Sam had to stand on tip-toes to see the package’s label. He spotted several stamps and marks with black permanent marker.

“I think this thing got seriously lost,” Dean said, his voice bright. “I should write a letter of complaint.”

“I can start putting the ingredients together, then,” Kevin said from somewhere above Sam. “The whole process is supposed to take about a day. We need to brew it overnight.”

“Yeah, yeah, go do that,” Sam pulled away from the package. He was acutely aware of how hard he was smiling, but he didn’t feel like caring.

“I can help,” Castiel offered, stepping forward to sweep the package from the table. Kevin clattered from the chair, and the pair of them disappeared into one of the hallways.

Feeling slightly dizzy now, Sam glanced up at Dean as he sank into Kevin’s vacated seat.

“Never thought I’d say this,” Dean said. “But I’m going to be so glad to be looking up at you instead of down.”

“I didn’t think…” Sam pulled at his mouth and huffed a laugh. “I never told you. I’ve been practicing climbing furniture.” Sam hadn’t meant to spill that; some part of his brain didn’t see any point in keeping it in anymore.

“Have you?” Dean tilted his head. “All Stuart Little style?”

“Sure.” Sam sank into a cross-legged sit. “I climbed a bookshelf with suction cups.”

“Fuckin’—“ Dean bowed his head; his shoulders started shaking. “I wish I could have seen that one.”

“No you don’t,” Sam said immediately. Dean lifted his head, and Sam saw his brow twitch into a miniscule frown. A long silence passed between them.

“At the same time though,” Dean said abruptly. “I’m going to miss being able to toss you around for once. You’re kind of funny as a wingless fairy.”

“Nice one,” Sam snorted. “Keep it up, Dean. You’ve got about 24 hours left to shove in as many bad jokes in as you can.”

“You doubting my abilities, Sammy?”

“God, no.”

***

The next evening, a low herbal scent had suffused the entire bunker. In the workroom where Kevin and Castiel had set up the potion—bubbling on an ancient Bunsen burner—the scent became downright sickly.

“Sure that’s not going to poison him?” Dean asked, his free hand over his nose and mouth. The other held Sam, who was doing his best to breathe through his mouth.

“It’s like medicine,” Castiel offered. He was hunched over the small pot, squinting at the potion as it cooled. Dean approached the workbench so Sam could hop from his hand to the workbench’s surface.

“So, we’re going to have to dunk Sam in the potion while someone incants,” Kevin said, all business. “Shouldn’t be more than a few seconds. We’ll talk fast.”

“I have good lungs,” Sam promised.

“What’s the incantation?” Dean asked.

“Here,” Castiel handed over one of Kevin’s notebook where, Sam knew, he had translated the ancient Arabic of the original spell. “We have the phonetic translation.”

“Okay,” Dean said after scanning the text. He looked up. “I’ll do it.”

The other three looked at him; no one, it seemed, had any real reason to dispute this. Sam wondered whether Dean wanted to take the responsibility in case things went wrong. He immediately flicked the idea away. Instead Sam focused on Dean as he recited the spell a few times, curving his American accent around the words that no one among the living spoke with any regularity.

“Ready?” Dean said at length. Sam nodded and climbed back into the hand offered to him. It crossed his mind to take in this moment; the last time he’d know his brother’s hands like this. Hands were strangely intimate for someone Sam’s size. They became entities in their own rights; Dean, Castiel, and Kevin’s hands all had distinct habits, small movements, textures. Sam had become thoroughly familiar with every details. Not just their hands either: their necks, their faces, their footsteps, their scents. It was strange, but it had become Sam’s reality.

Above Sam, Castiel was warning Dean to not get the potion on himself.

“So we just plop Sam in there?” Dean demanded. “And then he starts growing in there? Then what?”

“According to the texts, he’ll grow slowly enough to give him time to crawl out,” Kevin said.

“I’ll be okay,” Sam called up.

Dean looked hesitant, but he did eventually lower his hand to just over the wide pot. The brew had cooled to something lukewarm; it would be like having a big herbal bath.

“Okay?” Dean asked.

“Okay,” Sam nodded. Dean tilted his hand a bit and Sam slid into the warm mixture.

The herbal taste sank into Sam’s nose and pores. He could hear Dean’s voice rumbling just above the water, meting out the spell in careful syllables. Sam’s feet met the pot’s bottom. He wondered what it would feel to grow all at once; hopefully not any worse than shrinking.

The rumble of Dean’s voice tapered off. Sam shifted in the water. He didn’t feel any shooting pain or even discomfort. Sam’s lungs started to complain, but Sam remained motionless and kept his open eyes fixed on floating specks of debris—dried leaves, probably. Still no pain. He had something small and hot niggling in the pit of his stomach, in the back of his head. It took him a moment to identify it as panic. Sam’s brain abruptly joined in with his lungs and gave him a sharp demand to get himself air. Sam ignored it, released a mouthful of bubbles, and huddled down at the bottom of the pot. He could hear growing thunderclaps above him. He ignored them and squeezed his eyes shut and imagined himself stretching, expanding, taking up mass that rightfully belonged to him.

The quiet of Sam’s aquatic world exploded with bubbles and movement. Five fingers, tree trunks, grasped at Sam. They groped blindly for a moment before they found him and curled around him. Sam’s lungs screamed; his brain was ready to force them to inhale and hope to get lucky. The fingers tugged Sam up. Sam wanted to shout at them to let him stay, because if he stayed then he could still insist to himself that he was just waiting. That the hot panic behind his eyeballs was nothing but his own fears.

Cold air and noise smacked into Sam all at once. Sam heaved in a breath that scoured his throat and nasal passages. The fingers caged around him and rushed him up, up, until Sam squinted into a pair of bright green eyes. Castiel was saying something; Kevin was answering in a high-pitched voice. Sam couldn’t concentrate on them. He wrapped his arms around a massive thumb out of pure instinct and stared at the green eyes.

“Sam.” The voice was taut. The green eyes folded at their edges.

Sam buried his face into the base of Dean’s thumb and almost screamed.

**Author's Note:**

> Emotional cliffhangers!  
> This concludes the series' penultimate story. The next installation will be the last one. (And will hopefully not take nearly as long to get written.)


End file.
